4.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” asks the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver.¹ A question worthy of lifelong reflection.

In the language of Genesis, we humans were created to “rule over the earth.” To make something of the world. Each of us must find our place in the tapestry of humanity, the role we play, our little corner of the earth to love and tend.

Hence, our second need: calling.

If identity is our sense of who we are, what makes us, us, calling is an equally important and intuitive sense of what we are meant to do. After all, we do who we are; what we do flows from who we believe we are in our inner being.

And yet calling, too, is often fraught with paralyzing anxiety for modern people. My last name is “Comer,” likely from “Comber,” or “Comb-maker.” A thousand years ago, my ancestors in Scotland were comb makers. Had I been born in 980, rather than 1980, I would likely have grown up to be a — wait for it — comb maker. But today, I can choose from a dizzying array of options: I could be a barista or a journalist or a chef or a middle school teacher or an action movie star (obviously) or try my hand at literary fiction or attempt a small-business venture — the list of options is endless.

We no longer have to do what our father or mother before us did; we get to choose. But freedom isn’t free; it rises in tandem with anxiety, and seeing as we have more freedom than any generation in human history, it’s no surprise that Gen Z is the most anxious generation of all time.

How are we to know what path to walk in a world of limitless choice?

Even if “limitless choice” is an illusion, sold to us by politicians and the corporations that paid for their elections (we can’t actually walk any path we want; obviously, my odds of becoming an action movie star are basically nil), still, the illusion is real enough to paralyze us at every fork in the road. To become a journalist is not to become a lawyer; to become a small business owner is not to become a hairstylist. When the world (or even our well-meaning parents) tells us, “You can do anything you put your mind to,” we can easily feel overwhelmed.

“FOMO” is an overused trope, but to choose one path is to not choose countless others, and that’s more than a little terrifying. How do we know if we chose wisely? When pain comes, as it inevitably does, how do we know if it’s our cross to bear, or the consequences of a foolish decision?

We need something more than choice to set our face like flint toward our Jerusalem; we need a calling.

In the desert, God often strips us of our plans and purposes, and reveals to us his own. The wilderness has long been where God forms his prophets. It is the birthplace of dreams and destiny.

When we go into the quiet and encounter God’s love, it is then — and only then — that we feel safe enough to surrender to God and his direction over our life. To truly yield. To say with Mary, “I am the Lord’s servant,”² with the Apostle Paul, “I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me,”³ with Jesus himself, “I always do what pleases him.”⁴

This is where the way of Jesus is fundamentally at odds with the “true self” movement, at least, as it’s typically understood.

We go into the desert, not to decide on a path, but to discern one.

What we Christians call “discernment” is, put simply, the ability and willingness to know and do the will of God.

This tectonic shift, from decision-making to discernment, is a crucial step in the spiritual journey.

From: What decision should I make to maximize pleasure and minimize pain? To stay in control of my life and engineer my desired outcomes?

To: How is God’s voice of direction coming to me, and how do I say yes and joyfully yield to his wisdom and will in loving trust?

This deep, fissural shift in our life orientation — from decision-making to discernment — often comes after a long, protracted internal battle of the heart: Part of us wants to surrender to God and his calling on us, but another part of us wants to cling to control. To go our own way, thank you very much. The spiritual director Gerald May called this the shift from “willfulness” to “willingness,” but on the other side of this battle is a deep peace of heart and clarity of purpose.

It’s why we often return from the quiet with a renewed sense of calling:

This is what I’m meant to do, and not do.

This is what I’m meant to give my time to, and not to.

This is what I’m meant to give my best energies to, and not to.

The writer Thomas Kelly called this “the joyous burdens of love.”⁵ He noted that God’s heart is universal — it’s for the whole cosmos — every problem, every evil, every injustice, every need, God cares about all of it. The problem is: we are not universal; we are very much finite, mortal, weak, limited. So: God particularizes his universal heart in each one of our individual hearts; he places a small piece of the whole, deep into our desires, and says, “Go, work on that.”

“That” may be discovering a cure for cancer or getting solar power into space or running a tire shop or raising three kids and caring for your aging parents. It may be glamorous work, but it likely isn’t. But it’s our work. Our joyous burden. God’s heart, in our heart.

Our calling.

And when we say yes to God’s call on our lives, we can more easily say no to all the other calls on our lives, including the deranged voices in our own heads. When we take up our cross, we no longer have to carry everyone else’s crosses.

But as long as we just stand in the marketplace of public opinion, every entity with an agenda will just keep piling on extra crosses, extra burdens, extra “ought to’s,” that will leave our souls weary and depleted.

But. If we are willing to “come away” with Jesus, to go into the quiet, and listen for the inner voice of love, then we, too, may just emerge, as Jesus did, with an unshakable sense of who we are (and aren’t), and what we’re called (and not called) to do next.

Now, spoiler: there’s no formula here. We can’t control the eremos. In fact, a key function of the desert is to strip us of our need for control. To finally bring us to a true surrender, and with it, freedom. Honestly, there have been seasons when I’ve spent countless hours in the quiet and still felt deeply confused about what I should do next in my life.⁶ But each time I’ve stayed with it, the voice has eventually come, even if after a long period of waiting.

The key is, as the Desert Father Abba Moses used to say, “Sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”

But this much I know to be true: if you go away into the quiet, the same Spirit of Jesus that called you away from the world, will eventually send you back out into the world — freshly armed with a sense of who you truly are, and what you offer to the world: not as “a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared.”